Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Serenity Arcana

"Okay... So now everybody knows..." Shige-H sighed as a brush of fresh air hit everyone's cheeks in a welcome change compared to the unattended Boulder Town Police Force HQ facility they've spent the last hour in.

"That feels like a tiny dramatization and at least a little overblown... Kumogakure knows. Iwagakure might know. Unless I can talk Prabba-san into not disclosing this information. I saved her life. That has to account for something, right?" Mana tried seeing a bright side in the recent developments.

"Man, this fresh air just hits different. It smells so much like piss and vomit in there..." Endo belched, pinching his nose before realizing he was no longer in the holding cell, at which point the swordsman began drawing breaths rapidly and taking deep and satisfying gulps.

"Well, when you've got ninja coming and going, everyone imagines themselves a grand warrior and no one quite sees themselves as a toilet cleaner..." Prabba spoke with a husky tone as she left the defunct Police Force HQ right after the Stars. "I didn't mean to stalk you guys. I just wanted to talk, and I overheard what Mana said. I'm willing not to omit this information we've obtained from my reports to Iwagakure. Not only because of gratitude about Mana saving my life. I want to work alongside you and help you solve this mystery of yours."

"We are short on people. Desperately. We just lost someone we have been forced to rely on and then found out that we're actually shorter on hands than we initially thought when we still had that unreliable party with us," Shige-H groaned, placing her hands on her hips while she tapped her foot trying to come up with a plan of action.

"We'd be honored to work alongside you, Prabba-san. We may need to talk the rest of the peacekeepers, as many as possible, into assisting us as well," Mana nodded her head respectfully.

"I don't like it. Most of them acted like self-righteous fops..." Endo grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest and looking away.

"Please understand that to many of them, this is an undignified assignment. As I've said before, many ninja assigned to this town see themselves as elites with the capacity to change the world. Being assigned to serve as the peacekeeper of a town that belongs to another country, a country inhabited by people of a different skin tone who have just lost a swift yet grisly war where one must put their skills to serve those people and not fight them... It's a tough pill to swallow to many," Prabba explained.

"I see. Well, difficult or not, we simply must try reaching out to as many as we can," Mana insisted.

Before the Stars could come up with a plan of action, the door to the defunct Police Force HQ burst open with a handful of ninja in Kumogakure uniforms rushing out. Denkka, the Kumogakure kunoichi whom the Stars have already met, separated from the flock to approach the confused party and sighed in frustration before gathering the strength to speak up.

"Look, you guys are here to look into the business of some nuke ninja group, right? You may want to come with us on this. Apparently, the body of the guy that's been causing a mess this whole day disappeared from the morgue," Denkka forced out with a light growl to her voice.

"If they wanted their guy back, maybe they shouldn't have killed him off in the first place..." Endo rolled his eyes. From the looks of it, he wasn't overly fond of the idea of working alongside the local peacekeepers. Then again, the list of things Endo was not overly fond of was ever-expanding and spanned many volumes if penned down. The Stars were usually wiser and more successful working around his likes and dislikes. Though they've never been as few as they were now.

"This doesn't necessarily have to be our group," Shige-H shrugged. "If Krown is a ninja notable enough to have taken part in the battlefield of the Coltan Conflict, infamous for his crimes before the war and a member of a rogue ninja group, he'll have a notable bounty on his head on the Black Market. It's more than likely that a coroner has decided to make a living off of this one head and wrote the world's grisliest "I quit" note."